I joined a book club earlier this month. This is a first for me. Partly because I’ve not been asked before (shame on you all J) and partly because I’ve always got such a huge pile of stuff I want to read and so I’ve not been keen to add a bunch of other books that I might not like the look of. Anyway, at the first meeting we came up with a list of interesting offerings. And, thanks to the book club, for the last week or so I’ve been reading ‘253’ by Geoff Ryman. And it’s really really good.
Picture a London tube train on the Bakerloo line. There are 7 carriages rattling through the warm darkness. Each carriage seats 32 people and so in a beautifully efficient world, including the driver, you’d have 253 passengers on the train. Each passenger is given one page. Each page has 253 words about that passenger (the copious, entertaining and enlightening footnotes don’t count toward this total). For each passenger we are told about their outward appearance, inside information about that person and then what they are thinking and doing. The events of the book take place over the course of a journey from Embankment to the Elephant and Castle, which is a journey of about seven and a half minutes. And that’s it.
The idea is a nice one. It’s a game we’ve all played when sitting on the tube, on buses and planes, when standing in line at a supermarket checkout. It’s one of the first pleasures of going into town on the bus for a night out, imagining where your fellow passengers are heading. The old man, who only rides for a couple of stops, then eases his body down the aisle and to the same pub he’s drunk at since he was a boy. The young smudge-eyed emo kids in their painstakingly assembled black splendour, off to hang out with their tribe, all the school bullying forgotten about at least for tonight. The middle aged man, shined clean shoes and aftershave, fingers drumming on the hand rail – maybe tonight’s the night – never quite stops hoping.
It’s an easy game to play once or twice but it’s potentially a really hard one to pull off over the length of a novel. Ryman manages it brilliantly. There is an overarching narrative here (which I won’t spoil) but each person’s story is beautifully self contained, although some of the passengers know each other and so we get another side of some stories. He brings each of the 253 people, incidentally including a pigeon and the ghost of William Blake, to life. Some stories are funny, some inspiring, some deeply melancholy and affecting. Working with his stricture of 253 words per person forces him to be focussed and yet also gives each entry a poetic, lyrical quality. Each word must be carefully chosen and each phrase and sentence telling. I suppose the book is reminded me most of is ‘Sharp Teeth’ by Toby Barlow, another urban tale told in blank verse that uses elements of magical realism to both transport you and to ground you deeply in the reality of other people’s lives.
It’s just as well we can only see the outsides of each other and only ever glimpse a fraction of what a person is. People are like icebergs, their physical selves bobbing out of the water, onto bus seats, passing us in the street, stood next to us at the bar. We never really glimpse the totality of what they are. We can live with people all our lives, family, friends, lovers and never see all of what lies between the water. Just as well too. It’d be dizzying, numbing, arresting, endlessly fascinating. Too much empathy, like an inverse autism, would be equally difficult to live with.
Ryman’s book does show us a little of what it might be like to have this omniscience and it’s a terrific trip. But it’s good to know that you can put the blinkers back on and sit back on the bus and keep things simple. Scary looking guy (possible trouble), pretty girl (ah, if only), strange person (don’t sit next to me, don’t sit next to me, don’t sit next to me, phew!), cocky young guy (you’ll grow old like the rest of us sunshine) and here’s my stop. Time to get off, go home and shut the world out.
David Millington
26th January 2011
Nottingham
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